Houston appears to be churning along and growing in its seemingly unplanned, inevitable way. Besides the 99K house ribbon cutting, which we will get an OffCite post of its own, the story that stood out to me was Lisa Gray’s column on monk parakeet colonies in the Houston area. These birds have established wild colonies in cities all across America. What I love about the story is that the birds build their “condo” homes in transmission line towers. The ornithologist Gray interviews notes that the settlement patterns marks the northeast to southwest boundary between what used to be prarie and forest. The phenomenon seems paradoxical: both invasive and restorative, infrastructural and ecological, immigrant and in the native wild.

TRANSPORTATION Kansas City Southern Railway cuts 67 miles off a vital journey [Houston Chronicle] “Kansas City Southern Railway runs about half a dozen freight trains a day between the Houston region and Mexico, so it made sense for the railway to look for ways to speed up that journey. The company said Wednesday that it shaved 67 miles from the route by reopening a previously abandoned track between Rosenberg and Victoria.”

HUMBLE Council approves utility district for development [Houston Chronicle] “Under the terms of the agreement the utility district will be responsible for furnishing water, sanitary sewer service, drainage, recreational and road facilities and services to the area within its boundaries…At a previous meeting Wong showed Council development plans that call for light industrial sites, a hotel and retail sites.”

Wednesday June 17

Of the developers, for the developers? [Christof Spieler, Intermodality] “Days after the City of Houston’s draft corridor urban corridors ordinance was released, Houstonians For Responsible Growth – a developer group that generally opposes any new building regulations – endorsed the new ordinance. Why would developers be so enthusiastic about a new piece of regulation? Because they wrote it.”

Houston has so far weathered the recession better than most of the country’s major metropolitan areas, according to a report released today by the Brookings Institution, which found that Houston’s housing prices were the most resilient in the country.

Despite a rising unemployment rate, Houston’s overall economy ranked fourth out of the country’s 100 biggest cities as of March, the report found, placing it just behind Austin and just before Dallas. Five of the six best-performing cities were in Texas, including San Antonio, which led the list based on factors including employment, wages, and housing prices.

MOVE IT! Metro riders cotton to new bunny line [Houston Chronicle] “Metro officials said ridership on the Quickline during its debut week June 1-5 exceeded their expectations, averaging about 530 daily boardings. As you may remember, the Quickline is a new type of service offered by Metro. It operates only during the work week and only during rush hours. By eliminating many stops between Ranchester and the Texas Medical Center, the express bus aims to shorten the ride considerably.”

“Technically, they’re an invasive species,” says David Sarkozi, of the Houston Ornithological Society. “Just like the tallow trees and Japanese honeysuckle I spend my weekends trying to kill at the Anahuac Wildlife Refuge.” He and Dan Brooks, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, have included monk parakeets in a study of nonnative birds living in Texas.

But Sarkozi doesn’t argue that the parrots should be eradicated like tallow trees. “They’re charismatic birds,” he says, and notes that people love to spot them.

He maintains a Web database of bird sightings, and on it, he showed me a map of Harris County’s monk parakeet sightings. (You can re-create it for yourself on ebird.org.) The pattern runs diagonally through the county, northeast to southwest – along the line, Sarkozi notes, where a hundred years ago the prairie met the forest. That’s the kind of place a parrot likes to live: one where it can build its condo nest high in a dead tree, but forage for food on the ground. Or, in our degraded world, build atop stadium lights, but find breakfast on a soccer field.

HURRICANE IKE RECOVERY State expected to receive an extra $1.7 billion: Move comes as repair projects get set to begin [Houston Chronicle] “City officials have identified many additional projects that could be eligible for renovation with money from the second round of federal funding, said Richard Celli, Houston’s housing and community development director. Since housing in older neighborhoods in the city’s core is more likely to have been damaged, Celli said, the disaster funding will have long-term benefits in those neighborhoods. “We look at this as a chance to revitalize the inner city,’ Celli said.”